Way back in the 90s, when Oprah ruled the land, just before she single-handedly transformed the publishing industry with her Midas-touch book club, she featured a cookbook on her show, written by her private chef Rosie Daley. The recipe collection was called In the Kitchen with Rosie [1] and was filled with low-fat, low-carb meals that Oprah credited with her dramatic weight loss. Rosie, as I’m sure you recall, sold like gangbusters, but, as with most of my circa-90 cookbooks (what’s up David Rosengarten!?) ended up in a dark, moldy corner of my jam-packed basement, coated in a grimy dust that gives you a small window into the dungeon-esque conditions on the bottom level of our house. (As one dinner guest said as he walked through it to get to our garage, “I like your basement. It’s very…humanizing.”)
Anyway, if you are thinking that the reason I came upon my Rosie relic was because I had finally decided to organize the chaos, you have way more faith in me than I do. No, I was merely digging up spare forks for a birthday party, and happened to see its spine in a leaning tower of hardcovers perched beside a dismantled crib. I should’ve known better, because the last time I did a drive-by grab from this tower it was Drinking: A Love Story [2] (no relation) and wound up reading 200 pages of the memoir standing up right where I found it. (Wowowow, was that a wrenching read.)
But this was not going to happen with Rosie because as soon as I grabbed it, I knew what I was looking for: My favorite recipe in the collection. Maybe even my most favorite recipe from the 90s: The curried chicken salad spiked with crunchy apple, which we used to make for ourselves whenever we had leftover chicken in the fridge, or whenever we felt overly hedonistic and in need of a healthy recalibration. Like during holiday season, when every other night is spent stuffing our faces with cocktail-party gougeres and Chewy Molasses Cookies [3]. Like right exactly now.
Curried Chicken Salad
The idea that you could replace most of the mayonnaise with plain yogurt rocked my world back then. Now, we use that healthy shortcut all the time.
From In the Kitchen with Rosie [1], by Rosie Daley.
Whisk together the following dressing ingredients:
1 cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
3 teaspoons curry powder
3 tablespoons lemon juice
black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons shallots, minced
Toss dressing with:
1 1/2 cups cooked chicken breasts, cubed
1/4 cup frozen peas, thawed
1/4 cup shredded carrots
small handful golden raisins
1/2 cup shredded red cabbage
1/4 cup green apple, chopped
1/4 cup scallion, chopped
4 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 tablespoon parsley
handful arugula or greens
Serve on toasted pitas or nan (as shown above) or on top of salad greens.